Youth football league bars player for ‘being smart,’ mom says

A youth football player in Lunenburg, Mass., has been kicked off his team for “being smart,” his mother says, according to The Huffington Post. Michael Nowd skipped a grade five years ago because he was ahead of the game academically. However, he continued to play with kids his own age on his usual team, the Bengals of the Central Mass. Youth Football and Cheer Conference, WBZ-TV reports. That arrangement came to an end recently when someone anonymously complained the eighth-grader, who happens to be team captain, violated league rules for not being in the same grade as his teammates, the report says. However, Michael is reportedly no bigger than his seventh-grade teammates, and he’s younger than half of them. “I feel like they’re discriminating against a kid for being smart,” Michael’s mother, Dianne Nowd, told the station…